I didn’t hear Beautiful at the door so we missed a visit. That sucks. I feel so embarrassed.

The remodel is supposed to start tomorrow and I haven’t finished the house. We have plans today so that’s going to be festive. Given that they need to fix our bedroom walls before the other stuff I think it’ll be fine if I’m still moving out of the house on Monday.

We have found three classes on Outschool for Eldest Child that will involve her meeting other children remotely and doing lessons together. It’s not a perfect solution but it might be a step in the right direction.

The kids and I are going to struggle with the speed of academics over the next few weeks. Not because it is too much, but because figuring out the flow and speed and order of operations is rough. It might be too much too. But the kids can get it all done in 2-3 hours when they feel motivated. The fact that when they aren’t motivated it takes all day…. yeah. Tricky.

My kids would love to spend all day playing. They have great imaginations and they never get bored. I am boring though. I’ll take your good time and interrupt it with math. And spelling. Neiner. It’s still more fun than going to school would be. Maybe. Maybe it isn’t and they should be in school. I’m open to this idea. Let’s see where we land.

I’m doing the PT exercises and I feel like they are kicking my butt. And we restarted walking after a break for the terrible air quality and my legs forking hurt. My whole body is pissed right now, from the core out. I’d say that I’m at a 4. It is interrupting and rude but I can function. It’s just distracting in every minute.

I am craving sugary bread like an addiction. It’s not cool.

I’m processing my feelings about my friends still. Trying to compartmentalize. I’ve been getting the same advice over and over and when that starts happening I like to pay attention. Paraphrased from the half a dozen people who have expressed this sentiment in the past few weeks: “You are good at taking responsibility for the problems in your relationships with people. That’s bad. Stop it. Ok, maybe sometimes you bear part of the responsibility, but you never bear all the responsibility and you act like you do.” Yeah that’s true. I act like the problems are all my fault. If only I had tap danced faster. If only I had managed to suck up my disappointment and never expressed anger. If only I had a shorter memory and I didn’t notice promises that were never intended to be kept….

I can tie that back to my step father screaming at me that if I didn’t make something happen it was because I didn’t want it bad enough. My failure to influence other people into behaving how I want them to behave is my fault.

Always my fault.

So if everything is all my fault because I am such a terrible angry person I will just walk away with my terribleness.

For all of my flaws, and there are many, I do not tend to inflict my presence where it is not wanted.

It’s been a lot easier to sigh and relax into Noah lately. Noah may run down like a watch that needs to be wound but he doesn’t make 15 other promises that cut into his ability to keep the first promise he made. He just… really wishes he got to have sex more. It’s complicated. It’s complicated in so many ways, many of which are feeling shockingly healthy. I am not forcing myself to have sex. I’m nervous about the vaginal dilators on my counter. The physical therapist spent a while fingering me. Not an experience I felt super thrilled about but it was ok. Her experience was that the longer she had anything inside of me the more tense and tight and rigid my cunt became. (Clearly she used clinical language.) I don’t relax how I am supposed to. This makes me want to go find the first Users Guide I wrote. I documented pain and tearing from sex as unavoidable all the way back then. I think it was 15 years ago.

That’s just what sex is like for me. Pain and tearing and bleeding. Super fun, yo.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe there is another way. It’s going to be hard though.I feel sad and overwhelmed. I feel broken and unfixable. I feel like I will let Noah down because it is never going to get easier.

All I can do is try.

I’m starving. I feel like I’ve been starving for days. Freakin cold.